Books, Arts & Manners: Other Battles to Fight

Will Herb erg: From Right to Right, by Harry J. Ausmus (North Carolina, 275 pp., $29.95)

In a note to Robert Hessen of the Hoover Institution discussing this book, Sidney Hook wondered how anyone could take Will Herberg “seriously as a thinker.” Hook’s question betrayed the bitterness of his battles with Herberg, going back to the Thirties. Hook and Herberg had fought furiously as Marxists, and they again disagreed as prominent anti-Communists. One was (and is) a religious skeptic and a democratic socialist; the other celebrated a redemptive history that he identified with Judaeo-Christianity.

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Paul Gottfried

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Will Herb erg: From Right to Right, by Harry J. Ausmus (North Carolina, 275 pp., $29.95)

In a note to Robert Hessen of the Hoover Institution discussing this book, Sidney Hook wondered how anyone could take Will Herberg “seriously as a thinker.” Hook’s question betrayed the bitterness of his battles with Herberg, going back to the Thirties. Hook and Herberg had fought furiously as Marxists, and they again disagreed as prominent anti-Communists. One was (and is) a religious skeptic and a democratic socialist; the other celebrated a redemptive history that he identified with Judaeo-Christianity.